GILBERT: Michigan gets a C+ on report card

This is the year Gov. Rick Snyder and the legislature have promised to devote attention to reform of the state's primary and secondary public school system.

Apparently it can't come a moment too soon.

Education Week's annual Quality Counts report on the state of American education recently gave Michigan a D- in K-12 achievement.

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"Sadly, the grade is well-deserved, given our relative decline on national assessments, and our dismal achievement gaps for African-American students," stated the Education Trust-Midwest, a statewide education policy and advocacy organization that has an office in Royal Oak.

"It's not surprising that education will continue to dominate the heated debate in Michigan over how to improve learning for our students," the organization continued.

A series of reform measures were held up on the legislature's lame-duck session due to opposition from public school educators -- many of them from Oakland County.

Michigan's majority Republican leadership in the legislature has promised a more deliberate approach to consideration of the reform measures, though there is no question about what lawmakers and the governor favor. It is all spelled out on the Oxford Foundation website at oxfordfoundationmi.com.

The Oxford Foundation is acting as fiscal agent for the governor's office to administer a school finance reform project. The Oxford Foundation was established in 1991 by the then-Gov. John Engler to assist the state in "lessening the burdens of government."

In general, Republicans favor lifting the cap on charter and cyber schools, allowing students to take advantage of any public school programs offered regardless of district boundaries, and sterner measures for dealing with failing schools.

Meanwhile, the Education Week report offers fresh data and analysis from the EPE Research Center on key education policy indicators, including scores and letter grades for individual states and for the nation overall in five of six areas tracked by the annual report.

EPE Research Center is a division of Editorial Projects in Education, the nonprofit organization

that publishes Education Week (www.edweek.org).

This year's updated categories include: the Chance-for-Success Index, introduced in Quality Counts 2007 to offer a handle on the role that education plays in enhancing positive outcomes at various stages over the course of a person's life; the K-12 Achievement Index, which offers a yardstick on student performance by state on 18 crucial indicators; and school finance, graded on eight factors, including how education resources are spread within a state, as well as overall spending patterns.

Also updated are categories tracking policies that involve the teaching profession, and those that focus on standards, assessments, and accountability.

The sixth category captured in the report's annual "State of the States" roundup involves policies relating to transitions and alignment among different sections of the educational continuum, from early childhood to post-secondary education and the world of work.

The nation as a whole received a C overall grade. Michigan's overall grade was C+.

Education Trust-Midwest's leaders said they will focus their attention on efforts to improve the quality of education. That includes standards for charter and cyber schools.

"Charter schools have been proliferating across Michigan following the 2011 removal of the state cap," the organization declared in a recent statement. "That's good and perilous news. We're hopeful philanthropic efforts to create high-performing charters will succeed.

"But low-performing charters threaten the future and stability of high-achieving schools, whether they are traditional public schools or quality charters. Expected 2013 legislation would effectively also lift the cap on so-called cyber schools, despite the dismal performance of existing full-time Michigan cyber schools.

"Unlike leading states, Michigan imposes no minimum quality standards on companies opening or operating charter or cyber schools. This is one of Michigan's greatest present challenges to raising educational performance in our state. It must be addressed."

Stay tuned as the legislature tackles these issues.

Glenn Gilbert is executive editor of The Oakland Press. Contact him at glenn.gilbert@oakpress.com or 248-745-4587. Follow him on Twitter @glenngilbert2.